The Palestinian Authority announced on Thursday evening, November 13, that Israeli soldiers had killed two 15-year-old teenagers in the southern West Bank, which the IDF said was “terrorist”.
The Palestinian Health Ministry announced it without further details “Martyrdom of Bilal Bahaa Ali Baaran (15 years) and Mohammad Mahmoud Abou Ayache (15 years) killed by occupation bullets (Israel, editor’s note), this afternoon, Thursday, near Beit Omar, to the north Hebron“, a large city in the south of the West Bank, the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
The Israeli army had previously indicated that soldiers operating in the Karmei Tzur area, a Jewish settlement neighboring the Palestinian village of Beit Omar, several kilometers north of Hebron, had carried out attacks. “eliminated two terrorists who were about to carry out an attack”.
The Israeli army did not provide further details about the events that occurred amid escalating violence in the West Bank, which the UN said reached an unprecedented peak in nearly two decades in October.
Also on Thursday, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority Foreign Ministry accused Israeli settlers of burning down the Hajja Hamida Mosque in Dayr Istiya in the northern West Bank. “This clearly violates the sanctity of places of worship and reflects the deep-seated racism of settlers acting under the protection of the occupying government.” the ministry said in a statement.
The Israeli military said security forces were sent to the scene after receiving the incident “information and images (…) regarding the suspect who burned the mosque and sprayed graffiti.” The army did not identify the suspect at the scene, the IDF added, condemning it “all forms of violence”.
UN Secretary General António Guterres condemned the mosque attack “that such acts of violence and desecration of places of worship are unacceptable”, said his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, deprecatingly “a growing pattern of extremist violence is fueling tensions and must be stopped immediately.”
A day earlier, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, had made it clear that he wanted to end attacks carried out by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory where more than 500,000 Israelis now live – in colonies considered illegal by the UN under international law – among some three million Palestinians.
“The army will not tolerate criminal behavior by minority groups that tarnishes the image of a law-abiding society,” said General Zamir, while many testimonies accused the Israeli army of remaining passive in the face of violence committed by the settlers.
In recent weeks, increasingly violent and organized attacks attributed to young settlers have increased in the West Bank, targeting Palestinians as well as Israeli or foreign activists opposing colonialism, journalists and sometimes soldiers.
Violence has exploded in the region since the start of the Gaza war, which began on October 7. The violence has not stopped, even with a fragile ceasefire in effect in Gaza since October 10.
At least 1,005 Palestinians, including many fighters, as well as many civilians, were killed there by Israeli soldiers or settlers, according to an AFP tally based on data from the Palestinian Authority.
At the same time, according to official Israeli data, at least 36 Israelis, including civilians and soldiers, were killed there in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military attacks.
